Chefs on the grill. How do chefs see meat in the perspective of food sustainability issues?[Les chefs passent au gril. Comment les chefs cuisiniers se représentent la viande face aux enjeux de durabilité alimentaire ?]

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the restaurant industry's reflection on its social and environmental responsibilities. While several initiatives in the high gastronomy sector are positioning themselves in favor of change (e.g., the Michelin Green Star), the outlook for other segments of the commercial restaurant industry is more mixed. As the environmental impact of a restaurant depends strongly on the offer it provides, the implementation of sustainable measures depends largely on the choices made by restaurant owners. Faced with environmental and climate issues, current scientific recommendations converge on the need to reduce the consumption of animal products, particularly meat. This prescription poses a challenge for the commercial restaurant sector for several reasons: the French culinary tradition gives a highly symbolic place to meat, it is consumed more in out-of-home meals and consumers are unaware of and/or minimize the environmental impacts of meat consumption. While several recent research studies have addressed the issue of reducing meat consumption in restaurants, few have taken into account the chefs themselves. The general objective of this research is to explore chefs' perceptions of meat consumption in the restaurant industry with respect to environmental issues, and their influence on the way chefs construct their offer. To do so, this research uses the framework of social representations and the central core theory to study chefs' representations and their structure. It also considers the developments of the theory of professional representations, considering that chefs have, by their training and experience, a particular perception of a certain object (for example here the cooking of meat). This research also links the representations to the constitutive elements of the chefs' identity, in order to study the way in which the representations reflect and construct these different identity facets. Finally, the research will lead to the identification of the way chefs justify their professional practices around meat based on certain representations. In order to answer the questions raised by this research, a qualitative methodology of semi-directive interviews was chosen with chefs working in the French commercial restaurant industry as well as with chef trainers from a hotel school. These interviews will be analyzed thematically. The place of meat in the restaurant industry is an essential question among the current problems of the hospitality sector, posed by the difficult reconciliation between authenticity (the predominant place of meat in traditional French cuisine) and the demands of sustainability (inviting the decentralization of the place of meat). This work-in-progress paper has theoretical, managerial and educational implications. By exploring the professional representations of chefs, it questions in a more general way the extent to which an emerging societal trend induces interference with central elements of representations and identity. It also provides initial answers to professionals concerning the management of sustainability in the restaurant industry and possible adaptations to the place of meat. Finally, it presents possible pedagogical implications in the adjustment of the teaching offered by hotel schools in order to train tomorrow's professionals.